


but as the water fills my mouth/it couldn't wash the echoes out

by orphan_account



Series: echoes [1]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games), King's Quest (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, I have precisely zero impulse control, Light Angst, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22013908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Graham missed Daventry with all his heart and soul. Red feels naught but a depressed disinterest.(Or: through an accident of magic, Graham loses his way home. And, eventually, loses some of himself as well.)
Series: echoes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1584550
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	but as the water fills my mouth/it couldn't wash the echoes out

Red doesn't remember much of Before. 

His memories are fleeting, feeble things, as insubstantial as dust. If he strains his mind to work, he thinks he remembers a little of Daventry. A few smiling faces, the sunlight skittering along the birch trees, a furry gerbil nosing into his hand, a lone lingering memory of fire and fear and purple and death - these dusty, scattered images are all that remain of his old life.

It's not entirely his fault for forgetting. The air of Hallownest is like a sponge, wiping his mind clean of the past, stealing bits and pieces of him until he's just a broken facsimile of someone who could have been Graham, once upon a time. With every breath he turns into something else, something new and fragmented and permeated with hairline fractures. Something shattered and savage and ruthless - at odds with his old self.

(Because Graham was always good at prizing compassion and kindness, but he was far better at adapting to his surroundings. 

Red thinks that, before, when he was new and more Graham than Red, he might have tried to reason with some of his enemies. The memory of the False Knight shattering in front of him, of their bulbous head oozing out of their mask, of fear and pain and blood, of finally  _ giving up _ on reason and compassion and striking at the thing with his nail, again and again and again and again and again-

He'd tried, he'd tried so hard, but it was either death or cruelty, and Graham - when he was still Graham - had loved compassion, but he'd loved life more.)

Graham had known kindness, warmth, affection, adventure. Red knew those as well, but those memories are dim, faded. The mask pressing against his face; the roaring adrenaline of a fight to the death; the exhilarating feeling of power when he heals his wounds with stolen magic; the swoop in his chest when he takes flight with monarch wings; the weight of the heavy nail as it bounces against his back with every step he takes - those are what he's more familiar with.

And it's easy to forget, sometimes, that he was anything other than Red, that he is a stranger, an outcast, that his home lies neither in the streets of Dirtmouth nor among the leaves of Greenpath, but in a land far, far away, in another space and another time. It's especially easy in the heat of a fight - when it feels like he's handled no other weapon than a nail, with how naturally it now weighs in his hand; when he makes fluent use of magic that Daventry has never heard of, wielding it with ease born of a great deal of practice; when he dances and scurries and darts away from his opponent's attacks with a grace that Graham never had.

No, Red doesn't remember much of Before. The few thoughts of Daventry that remain feel almost foreign, distant. They're more unsettling than anything else, out of step with the world around him - out of step with Hallownest and the rhythm of fight, survive, kill.

(Sometimes, he thinks that really, he doesn't miss Daventry much at all. It's too far away, too indistinct. Hallownest doesn't feel like home, but it does so more than Daventry.

[The thought tastes a little like betrayal.]

Graham missed Daventry with all his heart and soul. Red feels naught but a depressed disinterest. And sometimes he thinks it shouldn't be this way - he should have more love for his old home than he does. But it is, and he doesn't, and there is nothing he can do about it.

[And in his darkest moments, he thinks it doesn't really matter after all - because Daventry isn't his. Daventry belonged to Graham, not to Red. Red has nothing except Hallownest's crumbling ruins.

{Red doesn't want anything else.}])

**Author's Note:**

> I do have explanations and plot and worldbuilding in mind, that I might explore later :D this is just a small introductory piece.
> 
> (...look I know the crossover looks like it makes no sense, but trust me, I have a plan)


End file.
